2012 Spanish Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

With the flyaway races finished for the time being the F1 bandwagon rolls into Europe for the first time for the Spanish Grand Prix. Traditionally this race hasn't provided the most entertaining of races with the pole sitter more often than not going on to win the race. 2011 was no exception as pole sitter Sebastian Vettel went on to win the race, however he wasn't by any means cruising as Lewis Hamilton charged him down and almost managed to take the lead off the young German but ran out of laps as he just couldn't get into the DRS window around a track that is difficult to overtake on.

Going into this years race it is virtually impossible on who is going to win the race. So far there have been 4 different winners with Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel all having stood on the top step of the podium so far this season and there hasn't been any team which has been consistently at the front at all four races with everyone having their fair share of problems and also benefiting from other peoples problems. The only truly consistent teams seem to be in the regions of midfield with teams like Williams who are now regular contenders for points after their 2012 car is proving to be far better than their dismal 2011 effort which barely managed to get a point and they have already surpassed last years total in just 4 races which isn't a bad achievement considering both drivers weren't exactly tipped for great things this season.

The buzzword at Mclaren at the moment and particularly for Lewis Hamilton is undoubtedly pit stops after a series of poor stops destroyed his race in Bahrain and also in Australia when he got caught out by the safety car. Jenson Button has also been affected by poor pit stops which show how these aren't isolated incidents and it is something that Mclaren urgently need to address as there is virtually no chance of getting on the podium let alone winning a race if they keep botching pit stops, for example, Hamilton lost well over 20 seconds from just pit stop problems which robbed them of at the very least 4th place if not a podium but this was probably unlikely given the supreme pace of Raikkonen and Grosjean in the lotus cars.

Indeed, lotus finally managed their most consistent race of the season and showed that they have designed a very fast race car as Kimi Raikkonen very nearly won his first race since returning to the sport in only his fourth race as an aggressive race saw him get within striking distance of leader Vettel but ultimately fell slightly away and had to settle for second which was still a fantastic result and with Grosjean finishing a comfortable third things are looking up for lotus going into the European season.

Barcelona is traditionally a hot and dry race although there have been wet races before although there hasn't been a rain affected race for a good number of years now. However it will be still difficult to suggest a possible winner as it depends who was the most productive at the Mugello test which starts today (Tuesday 1st May) and teams like Ferrari are banking that the raft of updates and upgrades that they will bring to the car for Barcelona will kick start their stuttering season which would be a boost for Fernando Alonso at his home race and an improved car would easily give him a good chance of a third drivers championship as he has already won a race in the below average Ferrari that is lower points at best at this moment in time but that could change for Barcelona and they will need to otherwise heads could be rolling at Maranello if Ferrari are out of the Championship before it has barely got going.

For Galahad 's brilliant circuit write up, see here http://cliptheapex.com/pages/circuit-de-catalunya/

Is it time to get annoyed about that last chicane yet? Oh, I hate that last chicane!

Not too much of a grid Arc last year:

Points scorers in Spain by the 10 point system over the last 10 years:

Funny how McNish would've scored points, too!

I've spent the last little while thinking this was the European GP at Valencia. Doh!

And now I'm realizing that I have no memory of last year's Spanish GP and I'm doubting I even watched it. But I have no idea what else I would've done!

Overtaking was way up (http://cliptheapex.com/overtaking/circuits/catalunya.55/) so it must've been at least a reasonable race.

Apparently it was quite good.

http://cliptheapex.com/threads/2011...fying-race-discussion.2662/page-20#post-48703